It’s nothing short of a miracle, the doctor says, and, I still don’t feel right, Dean answers.

You’re still healing, Sam says, his voice strangely flat, a tremor in his hands. Even from across the room, Dean can see how they shake, how Sam tries to stop it, but fails. The accident—

Marked, Dean thinks, the word coming from nowhere, but it’s the right one. Marked, because that’s what it is, this brand-new space inside him, as if something vital has been scooped out and cast aside. Out loud, he says, Sammy?

It’s nothing, Dean. Just zoned out for a second there. Man, it’s so good to talk to you again. Sam rolls his shoulders then smiles, and for a moment, all is right with the world.

Later, Dean will remember that smile and miss it with a longing so fierce it nearly takes all his breath away. Here and now, he smiles back.

*

The cup landed right side up, Sam says, and now his hands are hovering near his mouth, fingers working and failing to hold in the horror. It landed right side up, Dean, but there wasn’t a drop left in it.

*

He remembers that the nurse’s eyes had been kind, her words a constant low murmur he’d known was meant to soothe, but when she’d touched his wrist, he’d felt nothing.

You should rest, she said, you’re still not — I mean, there’s nothing more you can do--

He was my father, Sam had said, the words spoken quietly, barely audible over the never-ending whine of the monitors. But Dean had heard them, and everything else that lay just beneath. Our father.

She’d taken a step back and left them alone in the room.

*

His skin doesn’t seem to fit right over blood and bone, and the cold hollowed-out place in his belly is still there, a constant reminder of what’s been taken. Just how much, Dean doesn’t know, because grief isn’t a thing you can measure. Borrowed time has always been just an expression, until now.

Borrowed from where, and from who, he’d asked his father once, a long time ago.

John had looked up from his journal and smiled, shaking his head. From whom, not who, he’d said. And it’s not important, Dean. You have plenty of time, I promise.

Dean finally knows the answer, and would give anything not to.

*

Dean studies his father’s journal until the early hours of every morning, curved over it until his back aches dully, until the words smear together and dance before his eyes. He runs his fingers over the unevenly inked lines, the carefully detailed diagrams, searching for what he knows is there, somewhere. He hasn’t found it yet, but he will.

He will.

It’s almost light when he finally closes the cover, no sound but Sam’s breathing drifting across the room, and when he finally falls asleep, he dreams of a glass wall that spans across the horizon, off into forever. Sam’s on the other side and he’s yelling, Dean knows he is, even though no sound comes from his mouth, nothing but an endless stretch of bloodless lips.

Sammy, I’m here, he shouts, shouts until his throat feels raw, and the glass pressed against his palm is seeping coldness into his bones, filling his skin from the inside out with bright and brittle ice. Sammy, can you hear me?

A thousand playing cards flutter from nowhere to fall at Dean’s feet, tangling in Sam’s hair, skimming past his shoulders like strange wings, all of them curled and yellowed at the edges and each and every one covered with the secret he’s trying so hard to forget.

I love you, John had said, but Dean knows what he’d really meant was, goodbye.

*

He still sees her sometimes – her pale skin and dark, dark hair—barely more than a glimpse at the corner of his eye, forever in his field of sight, always gone when he turns back around. He can’t remember everything about that night—before, his mind fills in for him, before—but there’s something achingly familiar about her.

A tiny shiver across the base of his spine, and Dean presses fingertips there as if he can catch hold of the memory that way.

You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Sam says, and the bright sound of his laughter easily fills the space between them.